Fall arrives again and with it comes Microsoft’s new release for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. The changes that come into this release wave are inspired by requests from developers and users that belong to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 community. This second release of the year brings a number of promises to reform the way that customers use CRM, offering a large list of new features that will not disappoint.
In this article we will highlight the top features from October’s release and discuss how they can increase productivity and help customers improve their performance in CRM.
1. Business Card Scan
No one likes to have a ton of business cards heaped up in a big pile on their desk. It’s a waste of time to find the contact information you need, not to mention the negative impact it’s having on the environment! Business card scan is a top request by customers and Microsoft have delivered this shiny new feature to help save time and the planet, one card at a time!
This feature is available on mobile or desktop. It will appear at the top of your screen when you select Quick Create a contact. When taking a picture of the business card, the system will take the contact information from the photograph and pull it into the correlated field.
(Image from Microsoft page)
2. Opportunity Closing Dialog
Quite often, organizations don’t understand why a deal has been lost or won because the data isn’t captured properly. To overcome this issue, Microsoft is giving customers the option to customize the Opportunity Closing Dialogue.
What will this feature update be used for? It’s a simple one-word answer, REPORTS. What else puts more pressure on an entire company at the end of the month than reports! Sales Reps will be all too familiar with Sales Managers asking, “Why was this deal lost?” or “What helped you get this deal over the finish line?”. Sales Reps can now showcase all of these insights within CRM.
Having the ability to customize the Opportunity Close dialog box empowers the end user to select the specific reason why the deal was lost or won. Was a deal lost to a competitor? Or did a sales initiative help seal the deal? Sales teams can now report on it all with this new feature. System Admins have the ability to add fields that will help users report on key metrics for the business. Admin changes must also be made on the named form of the Opportunity Close entity.
You can find this configuration under Settings > Administration > System Settings
3. Simplified lead management experience:
Microsoft understand that users want the lead management process to be as simple as possible. That’s why they have delivered a simplified lead management experience that autopopulates data for a new lead if related information already exists within CRM. This saves Sales Reps time and helps them qualify leads quickly, seamlessly moving them to the next stage of the sales cycle.
Not only does this new functionality simplify things for Sales Reps it also empowers customers to free up space within CRM. Administrators can now make the decision to create or not create Contacts, Accounts and/or Opportunities when a lead is qualified. They have control of this on the back end through the settings.
4. Enhance the adding or editing Opportunity/Quote/Order/Invoice products experience:
One of the most requested features is having the ability to decide whether or not users want to add a Price List to a Product, and/or quickly edit Product properties. Microsoft are now responding to this request by giving users the power to make their own decision. This feature will include the option to work on the opportunity form whilst managing the properties of the Product. This saves time and allows Sales Reps to shift their focus to more important tasks.
5. LinkedIn: Sales Navigator integration enhancements:
Professional networks are just as important to sales teams as social networks are to teenagers at university… they mean absolutely everything! Microsoft Relationship Sales brings together LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 Sales to allow for more personalized engagements. Once again, Microsoft raise their game with LinkedIn by helping users to manage their communications by introducing a widget inside a Dynamics 365 to host the LinkedIn InMail component, where the sales team can compose and send InMail messages within Dynamics 365 while viewing a LinkedIn profile. If organizations have the ability to sync, then profile pictures from LinkedIn will appear as the contacts picture within Dynamics 365. Pretty cool stuff, right?
After you enable this feature on the settings, you can access to it from the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tab on each record
6. Improve or simplify most common sales workflows
In a sales environment continuous improvement is key for productivity. Microsoft continue to help organizations accomplish this by simplifying workflows and enhancing processes. This release sees a bunch of features that contribute to this goal:
Enhancing the Opportunity form user experience.
• Supporting reparenting of products and the addition of properties at the product level.
• While defining a product catalog, admins can update the parent of a product, bundle, or family in cases where products need to be realigned. Additionally, they can add properties directly at the product or bundle level.
• Documents tab permanently visible in the main form for the main ODB entities as Contact, Opportunity, Lead, and Account.
7. Softphone Dialer:
In this digital age, remote selling is integral and the demand for online and over-the–phone purchasing is increasing. Microsoft respond to this increasing demand with Softphone Dialer, a feature that allows sales teams to make phone calls with their softphone with just one click. By integrating the calling experience with Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft are helping sellers become more productive. Available in the Unified Interface only, users simply click on the phone icon next to the phone number to bring up Softphone Dialer.
Softphone Dialer icon next to a phone number
Note: You’ll need to follow the below procedure in order to access these new features:
1. Copy your Production to your Sandbox environment
2. Enable the 2019 release wave 2 on Sandbox
3. Update Sandbox
4. Test all the changes on Sandbox
5. When you are sure that everything is working as expected enable the 2019 release wave 2 updates in your Production environment
